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First manned flight using hydrogen battery doesn't cause rain, only tears
You're looking at the world's first manned flight powered by a hydrogen battery. Boeing's prop-driven aircraft set the lone pilot aloft for about 20 minutes at a speed of 100-kilometres (62 miles) an hour at an altitude of about 1,000 meters. The 800-kilogram (1,760-pound) craft with a 16.3-meter (51-foot) wingspan is capable of flying for about 45 minutes under the power of its hydrogen fuel cells -- the airplane's batteries provided an additional boost for takeoff. The fuel cells harvest the energy produced by the chemical transformation of hydrogen and oxygen into water -- that makes the craft clean as well as near silent. Unfortunately, the technology is nowhere near the point of powering commercial aircraft. At best, the fuel-cells could act as a secondary power source... in another 20 years.
Hydrogen fuel cell powered Hyfish jet takes flight
It looks like some folks in Bern, Switzerland may have gotten a bit of a rude wake up call recently, when the unmanned, hydrogen fuel cell powered Hyfish jet made its high-pitched debut earlier this month -- which, according to the group of developers behind it, makes it the "world's first" jet of this sort. They don't seem to have been content with simply getting the jet off the ground, however, with the Hyfish reportedly pushing itself to a top speed of 200km per hour and even performing a few aerial acrobatics, which you can thankfully check out in the video after the break. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have any plans for a manned version anytime soon, although Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies (who helped out with the Hyfish) does see the technology winding up in other UAVs, which they say would be capable of 15 to 30 hour flight times.
BMW Hydrogen 7 is unveiled as first for luxury performance space
While plenty of car manufacturers have been working hard to bring hydrogen-based vehicles to the everyman, it seems BMW has been taking an alternate tact, and instead got bizzy squeezing a hydrogen drive into a 7 Series model. The car's engine can run on either hydrogen or gasoline, and includes tanks for both. You can manage around 124 miles on hydrogen and an additional 311 miles on gasoline, which should cut down on the whole "stranded in the middle of nowhere since there aren't enough hydrogen stations yet" situation. Performance is passable, at 0-62mph in 9.5 seconds, but this ain't no Tesla. The switch between power sources is performed automatically at the push of a button, and the car will be produced in a limited series for selected users, meaning you probably won't even have a shot at one. All the same, it's good to see alterna-fuel vehicles getting so close to reality -- and BMW seems convinced that in reality, the future won't just play host to compact boringcars.
